Acid and Bases

If people think anything like i do, they probably think what makes an acid an acid, and what makes a base a base? An acid is a substance that reacts with a base. Acids are known as being sour. They react with metals like calcium and bases like sodium carbonate. Acids donate hydrogen ions. Acids can also be dissolved in water when the balance between hydrogen ions and hydroxyl is shifted. A base is a substance that can accept hydrogen ions or donate electron pairs. Bases also become less basic when mixed with acids. Bases can be dissolved in water due to the balance between hydrogen ions and hydroxyl ions shifting the opposite way.

       To measure how acidic or basic a liquid is, scientists us a pH scale. Even though there are many types of ions n a solution, pH focuses on concentrations of hydrogen ions and hydroxide ions. The scale goes from 0 to 14, and distilled water is right in the middle of the scale at 7. Acids are found closer between 0 and 7. Bases are further away from 7 to 14. Most liquids usually have a pH somewhere near 7, either below or above the mark. When looking at the pH of chemicals, numbers are extreme! Some substances may value with a pH of one and the next could be a 14.

Here is a pH scale-

Beers Lab

This was again a pretty quick one day lab for me. We used a nickel nitrates solution and water. Then we had 3 different unknown nickel nitrate solutions. We had 5 test tubes and put a certain amount of solution and a certain amount of water in it. The first tube had 2 mL of 0.40 M NiSO4, and 8 mL of distilled water. The second tube had 4 M NiSO4, and 6 mL of Distilled water. The third tube had 6 mL of 0.40 M NiSO4, and 4 mL of distilled water. the fourth had 8 mL os 0.40 M NiSO4, with 2 mL of distilled water and five with ten mL of 0.40 M NiSO4, with no distilled water. After we did all of that, we put some of the solutions into Cuvettes and then into the colorimeter. What the colorimeter did was tell how much light would reflect from the solution. The darker the solution, the more absorbency it had and not much light could pass through. But the lighter the solution, the more light could go through it, because it had a lower absorbency. When we put the Cuvettes in the colorimeter, it graphed and told us on the computer the absorbency.
       We did this lab based off of Beer's Law. Beer's Law states that the absorbance is directly proportional to the concentration of a solution. If you were to plot the absorbance versus the concentration, the graph would be n a pretty straight line.

Crystals!

With it being closer to the end of the year, everything has been crazy! I was gone for pretty much the whole lab, but when Mr. Ludwig got back I made it up, with all of the other people who missed it too.
    The procedures for this labe were:

1. Obtain a good amount of distilled water and put it in a beaker.
2. Put aliminun potassium sulfate annd mix in distilled water until it is supersaturated.
3. After stirring, there were still crystals in the bottom of the beaker, so we then set it on a hotplate to let the crystals disolve, while stirring every couple minutes.
4. While the the aliminum potassium sulfate is on the hotplate, keep adding potassium sulfate until it is supersaturated as well.
5. Then we were supposed to let the mixture cool over night, but I did it all in one day, so i let it get cool enough to add my sea crystal on the string.
6. I then let the crystal sit over night in the potassium sulfate solution.

      The Next day that I came into class, My crystal had grown bigger, and a much smaller crystal had grown on the string a little ways from the bigger crystal that was tied to the string. I had a lot of fun learning how to make crystal :)